SAJ-99
Well-known member
But I believe Oregon is less checkerboard, would you agree?
Montana mule deer rant
- Thread starter brockel
- Start date
FI460
Well-known member
Couldn't tell ya. Pretty significant checkerboarding in much of the west side. You can see it in satellite imagery in most of the coast range without any type of layer on.
I'm not sure why it would matter though. "Was this animal harvested on public, private, or private land with public acces?"
rogerthat
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I have never understood why game and fish agencies would ignore administration of the land. It’s a very important aspect. If you are managing for x harvest but you are unable to achieve that because 90% of the lands are inaccessible private lands it doesn’t do any good to increase tags in that unit to increase the harvest. A different approach may be needed to manage the unit to x harvest. Admin of the land is an element of every unit and if not accounted for can lead to poor management decisions
SAJ-99
Well-known member
Yeah, seems like quite a bit on SW corner, but still nothing like E MT. It will be interesting to see how OR does it.
I think it matters in how tag #s are determined. But we keep going back to harvest, and I don't think that is what should be managed to. We keep trying to say "Make changes that are good for the resource" but always come back to managing the ones we can shoot. The elk conversations are different, because the strength of the overall population is in a different place. With that premise, I'm trying to decide if public/private should matter in how a game agency manages the MD resource.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
I remembered this from OnX, published in 2019. Montana 1.56m acres landlocked. Oregon 47k. I think a lot has to do with population density and overall development.
FI460
Well-known member
That report is on state lands. Oregon has an order of magnitude more inaccessible federal public lands.
But inaccessible public lands isn't where I think this information would be valuable. You could have a unit that is a contiguous 50% public and a contiguous 50% private and if all the critters on the public are hammered for 11 weeks straight for tens of critter generations I bet we could glean some interesting results from harvest reporting based on land ownership.
I agree that harvest isn't exclusively what should be managed too though. We always preach that we want managers to do what's best for the resource and in that circumstance perhaps private vs public doesn't matter so much, but managers also have an obligation to provide the most important/ relevant information to the trustees of those wildlife. FWP should be able to provide the resolution of both population and harvest that it's constituents are interested in, IMO.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
Federal land was in a different report. OR jumped to 443k on those. Region 7, SE MT was at 898k.
FI460
Well-known member
Yes. Perhaps my phrasing was confusing. I didn't mean to imply that Oregon had more of anything than Montana. Oregon has an order of magnitude more landlocked federal lands than state lands. But I think larger contiguous pieces are more relevant to the discussion.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
LOL, yes sorry, back to original point. It should easier for OR to manage harvest or population on public vs private because they have those types of pieces. I don't know if that would be a reasonable expectation in MT or WY because of the large checkerboards where an animal can move through multiple ownership blocks on a daily basis. Seems more aspirational than practical for them.
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antlerradar
Well-known member
I think you are right on the public that is checkerboard, but not on the bigger blocks of public. The Custer is almost half of the 898K acres of public in region 7.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
I didn’t realize there were parts that were inaccessible. That must be where all the 170’’ mulies are hanging out.
antlerradar
Well-known member
Very little of the Custer is inaccessible. Some parts take a little work to get there. The deer herd on the big blocks of accessible public is were the issues are. Without a change in management those places are going to struggle to recover from the recent down turn. I am not worried about the deer that move from private to the small bits of accessible public land, those deer herds will recover form this drought. As more and more hunters use the small islands of public out of necessity, deer will simply avoid them when hunting pressure gets too great. You can not put two or three groups of hunters per day on a state section and expect deer to keep using the section.
There's a few problems with this data that the FWP is releasing- or more importantly, isn't releasing.
1- Deer populations. FWP release the populations since 2007, then say "the high populations of the past weren't sustainable". The thing is- people are asking about populations in the 90's, and FWP are referring to the 50's-60's, and intentionally letting people confuse the two- FWP is intentionally obscuring the problem. It has been a year or two, but I did manage to find the population trends at one point. From what I recall, the population is currently half of the 90's, and maybe 25% of the "unsustainable" (the data since eludes me). This isn't even getting into the methodology for counting populations- this is the drop using their terrible methods, the count that they actually defend. And let's not even get into why they don't provide public/private split for harvest, even though they collect it.
2- Deer harvest. The harvest is shown as "consistent" in their chart going back from the 70's. But that's with less than half the state population, and I would say far less than that on hunter participation and hunter days (thanks to the glory of hunter redistribution and increased nonresident participation). Again- reporting this metric seems dishonest, at worst, and idiotic, at best, given the changes that have occurred since reporting started.
Suggested changes:
- The golden metric to me is "hunter days per harvest" instead of just harvest- this takes into account harvest, days per hunter, and success rate. You can go further and say "hunter days per 4-point bucks", to get an idea of herd health. The idea I'm going for is the correlary to "OBPS" in baseball- one metric to show quality. I'm still running through exactly how to do this, but the "Days per 4pt" is OK for now. It shows how hard people are working to attain mature deer harvest, and gives you an earlier indication of population collapse- people are willing to lace their boots up far tighter, and take smaller deer, before completely giving up. But it also shows "too cold, didn't go", and "could only find a forky".
- Mandatory reporting absolutely has to happen, either phone or online. I'm using Missouri as the golden standard here- they had nearly 300,000 deer checked in last year, across 7 seasons. Data to include: Date of harvest, HD, public/private, Species, antlered/antlerless, buck/doe, number of points, and possibly one or two body length measurements (Missouri takes a face-length for does and antler base size for bucks). Hell, could even ask how far in they hiked. I know the remoteness of a lot of the state is a problem, so same-day reporting isn't something I'll push for. But definitely lock people out of applying or buying tags (online) or from issuing a tag if they choose mail-in tag applications. Same idea as HIP for Migratory waterfowl.
- Once you have good numbers, and we can convince the leadership that there is, in fact, a problem- then we can get to work on how to stop this decline. End unlimited/general rifle hunt in the rut (maybe some late-season draw-only permits), split tags by species, eliminate MD doe tags on public, etc.
For background- I'm an engineer that also has a biology degree. My main purpose in life is to call people on bad methods and punch holes in arguments. To quote an old mentor- "In God we trust- all others, bring data." FWP is not bringing sufficient data- both quantity and quality.
This dead horse is sufficiently beaten, to the point it's nothing but a horse-smelling puddle- so I'll take my leave.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
100%. I might not agree on how "better" harvest numbers would be, but I would sure like to find out. I would love to see more data, including the nuts and bolts of the model. I want to know when historical changes were made to the model, transects, adjustment factors, whatever. Every population or harvest should have a footnotes page with all the little details they assume no one cares about. I also want to know when subjective decisions were made that changed what the model produced or how the number of tags was determined. The current opacity is their enemy.
That said, we need to understand there is a difference between seeking better data, and seeking data that supports the view we believe to be true.
You are 100% correct. At this point, I might even settle for them just publishing all the data they have, instead of obscuring it through shifting baselines and exclusionary timeframes. But I think we all agree that the data is sorely lacking in it's current distributed form.
Engineguy852
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I hunted Terry this year, was hunting some really good country. Saw one mature buck in 5 days of hunting and only probably saw 25-30 deer for the whole week. It makes learning how to hunt mule deer very hard when populations are so low.
Sounds like you did pretty good. I hunted a lot more than 5 days and never saw what I would call a mature buck.
Engineguy852
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It was probably a lucky thing to be honest.
